A principall Fruit of Frendship is the ease and discharge of the fulnesse and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds doe cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the minde: you may take sarza to open the liver; steele to open the spleene; flowers of sulphure for the lungs; castoreum for the braine; but no receipt openeth the heart, but a true Frend; to whom you may impart griefes, joyes, feares, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppresse it, in a kind of civill shrift or confession.

This medical mini-tract comes from that dark angel of English prose, Sir Francis Bacon. I don’t have any deep thoughts about it, but I do appreciate the use of a list or litany, even though I have no idea what any of the curatives are or how they are to be taken (my apothecary was fresh out of sarza, steele, flowers of sulphure, and castoreum). After setting up a complete thought (”you may take sarza to open the liver”), Bacon can convey similar thoughts just by naming the pairs of nouns to go in the appropriate places (”sulphure for the lungs”, “castoreum for the braine”). If he had so chosen, he could have pared down his prose even further, eliminating the word for (e.g., “flowers of sulphure, the lungs; castoreum, the braine…”), and his meaning would have been just as clear.

A list in prose serves the same purpose as a grocery list on the fridge; if you’ve already spent time driving to the store or thinking up a high-octane verb, bring home as many victuals as the trunk of your sentence can hold. And after Lord Bacon, append to the list something sweet and surprising (no receipt openeth the heart, but a true Frend…).

Further reading: The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon